Age and gender confusion at the Olympics

[Joel S. Berson]

At 8/15/2008 11:19 PM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>>Subject:      Re: Age and gender confusion at the Olympics
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>I speculate that as the author was writing he was pronouncing his
>>sentence as "Hay is also a favorite ...", rather then "Hee was ...",
>>and so was not aware of possible confusion in his readers.  Another
>>way for him to avoid confusion might have been to write "Ms. He was
>>...", or in some other way the move He to within the sentence,
>Pinyin "he" would be more like "huh" (to my Anglophone ear), I think ...
>which doesn't at all vitiate the above.

(I was guessing.)


>I also did a double-take BTW. After all, a little gender confusion is
>nothing new to the Olympics.
>
>Probably putting "Ms." or otherwise clarifying would violate the
>company's style rules and generate angry letters from persons "offended"
>for various reasons.

I don't definitively know about the Boston Globe, and we are perhaps
more easily offended about manners here than in New York, but -- the
Globe is now owned by the New York Times, and "Ms." is the Times's
required style (absent any expressed desire by the subject),
promulgated some years ago.  And probably written about by Safire.
... Yes indeed -- "ON LANGUAGE; GOODBYE SEX, HELLO GENDER", Aug. 5,
1984, when he wrote "It breaks my heart to suggest this, but the time
has come for Ms."  And the editors responded:

"From the Editors:

"Some days the Title Question appears to claim more time - and ignite
more passion - than the East-West arms race.

"We accept anyone's choice - in this case, Geraldine Ferraro's choice
- of a professional name. But a title is not part of the name.
Publications vary in tone, and the titles they affix to names will
differ accordingly. The Times clings to traditional ones ( Mrs., Miss
and Dr., for example). As for Ms. - that useful business-letter
coinage - we reconsider it from time to time; to our ear, it still
sounds too contrived for news writing.

"Among traditional titles, why not heed the bearer's choice, assuming
it isn't deceitful? Representative Ferraro's Mrs. seems no more a
matter of ''right'' or ''wrong'' than the preferences of Beverly
Greenough (Miss Sills), Joan Dunne (Miss Didion), Diana Silberstein
(Miss Ross), Meryl Gummer (Miss Streep) or Dr. Henry A. Kissinger
(who favors Mr. ).

As Mr. Safire might put it, they're all entitled."

And in "Talk to the Newsroom: Deputy News Editor Philip B. Corbett",
published Oct. 29, 2007, on page 8 of 13:

"A. Our style is to use "Ms." unless a woman chooses to use "Mrs." or
"Miss." That rule applies both to private individuals and to public figures.

>Moving it to within the sentence would be reasonable IMHO. But such care
>would be foreign to the Internet, surely.

I was writing of the paper edition of the Boston Globe.

Joel

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org